Irish Details - Dublin Part 3

Our last day in Ireland was spent hoofing it around town, catching a few things I'd seen before and a few new things, too.  All in all, a great day.

Our first stop was Trinity College, which has both the Book of Kells (an elaborately illuminated medieval copy of the Gospels) and the spectacular Old Library.  This is a panoramic shot of the inside of the Old Library.  Yes, that's two stories of floor to ceiling book shelves in ornate galleries.

Next up was a visit to the National Museum, which houses archaeological finds from all over the island.  Jewel-encrusted was a common descriptor :)

Then, a nice walk through two big public open spaces:  St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square.  These are Mute Swans in the ponds at St. Stephen's.

The day also included traipsing through residential neighborhoods with the fancy Georgian doorways the city is so known for.

We ended the walking tour with a trip to the Chester Beatty Museum, located in Dublin Castle.  The Castle is a big sprawling office complex, of which only a small part looks anything like a castle.

I couldn't take pictures inside the museum here, but it was fantastic.  Chester Beatty collected early manuscripts and illuminated scrolls from around the world.  There are amazing exhibits on Japanese birds & flowers art, early copies of the Quran, fragments of early Bible texts, and so much more.

I could take pictures of the park-like Oriental Gardens inside the Castle walls.  Later this night, we decided to simply visit a supermarket and make a picnic dinner for our last meal in Dublin.  A nice thing about the city is that little and big markets are within walking distance, and prices are really no different than I would expect in the stores I normally shop at here.

We were able to pull this together for about 20 Euros, including some beverages.  A very nice way to end the day, and the trip!

A God in Ruins

Let's take a step back.  This book follows Teddy, Ursula's brother, from Life After Life.  In that book, Ursula lives many many versions of her own life, beginning and culminating in an attempt to assassinate Hitler, possibly in hopes of preventing WWII and her brother Teddy's death.  At the end, she accomplishes this but is born yet again.

Teddy doesn't have multiple lives, just the one he thought he wouldn't have.  As a bomber pilot in the war, he had to assume he'd never make it home.

My personal interpretation of both books goes like this:  Ursula was "meant" to die at birth, but rebooted and continued through her iterations to a life where she could try to prevent WWII.  However, despite the Hitler assassination attempt, it was still a world where Teddy died.  Therefore, when she was reborn again, her mother (who was particularly fond of Teddy) was prepared and prevented the infant Ursula's death, which sent her through all the motions again, to make a world where Teddy survived.

What we see in A God in Ruins is that life, the one no one thought Teddy would have.  So, my take is that Life After Life sets up all the sacrifice of war, while A God in Ruins follows a great deal of the aftermath, and makes us wonder if it was worth it.  After all, Teddy doesn't get a cake walk.  His wife dies in a completely terrible manner, his daughter grows up to be a resentful, neglectful, self-righteous sad sack for most of her life, and his relationships with his grandchildren are touch and go sometimes.  You wonder, "Ursula worked so hard, and for this?"  But of course, the answer is YES.  Because what other option was there?

Sooooooo.  I wrote the first four paragraphs of this review before I finished the book.  As it turns out, there is another option.  And in the Afterword, Atkinson herself says that she thinks of the book as another one of Ursula's lives, one that was left unwritten in Life After Life.  The ending of the book, in one fell swoop, managed to both completely crush my interpretation of the book while also validating it.  Because [MAJOR SPOILER ALERT] we find out on the last page that Teddy really did die in the war, and the book is recounting what might have been.  So, I was completely wrong.  But it's also telling us that what might have been - peoples' lives, warts and all - are worth Ursula's sacrifice.  That war imposes a horrific cost by erasing thousands and millions of possibilities.

On another note, I think another reason that I connected to this book is that I identify strongly with Teddy's personality.  A person fascinated with the beauty in nature, even-keeled, not understanding a higher power but, in the face of that, feeling the importance of being kind.

Some people are soured by the ending, but I was not one of them.  The last few pages, when the house of cards starts to fall, are completely disorienting, totally fascinating, and some of the best reading I've had in years.  I am thrilled that I had no idea about the book's ending, or even the fact that there is a (giant) twist at the end.  It's better to get there with no sense of what's coming.

In fact, taking both books together, I think have found one of my new absolute favorites, and paired with other recent readings, have had to install a triumvirate of Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, and Kate Atkinson as my must-read authors these days.

Final call:

This is one of those books that pulls you along, exhausts your emotions, and at the end, changes your life.  I know it won't be the same for everyone, but having that potential alone makes it worth the read.

As you'll see this book sort of shorted me out emotionally, and I've resorted to popular stuff and fluff for my next bunch of books.

Life After Life (after life after life)

I have a lot of stories that begin with, "I stopped in at the library ..." and this is one of them.  I usually go in to check their book sale room.  This time I saw A God in Ruins on the new fiction shelf.  Just out in May of 2015, and I could walk out with it, no waiting, no cost, three weeks, all mine.  So, of course, I did.  The only issue?  You have to, or should, read Life After Life first, because A God in Ruins is a companion piece and I was afraid it wouldn't make sense to read them in the wrong order, or to read one without the other.

It's no spoiler to say that this book has a unique structure.  Ursula Todd lives her life over and over again, with circumstances changing slightly or greatly from time to time.  It takes her quite a few tries to live past childhood.  That she makes a probably successful attempt on Hitler's life is revealed on the second page.  The rest of the book is, more or less, explaining how and why she got to that point.

The mechanism behind the repeat lives is never explained, it doesn't need to be.  There are some marvelously dark humorous vignettes, particularly centered around the Spanish Influenza epidemic.  Ursula's growing awareness of her looping lives is a neat aspect of the plot.  The actual "larger picture" is not defined - I have my theory of what happens and why, but I suspect that it doesn't match up with others' ideas or even the author's, necessarily.  But more on that with the next book!    

I have Life After Life as an ebook.  I recommend tackling this with a paper copy.  I would love to have been able to flip back and forth through the sections easily.  Each begins with a date and sometimes it's easy to forget when and where you are.

The few glaring loose ends turn out to be mostly addressed in A God in Ruins.

Final call:


I'm actually really tempted to bump this up to five stars.  But I'm withholding that final star, well, because, you'll see.

Irish Details - Dublin Part 2

Our first full day in Dublin did not go as planned, for better or worse.  Poor Justin, who had not been feeling well at all, felt even worse.

We hadn't planned on navigating the Irish health care system, but unbelievably, we were able to visit a doctor, get and fill two prescriptions, and have him back in bed at the apartment in less than an hour and a half.

Since we had spent most of the trip to date walking through fields, I was sorely behind on buying souvenirs.  So I took the opportunity to wander through the city, shopping as I went.  Here's my afternoon:

This is Georges Street Arcade, a market with stalls and more permanent stores.  I spent way too much money in this shop, they had a lot of quirky and creative handmade glass crafts.

After this, I was getting hungry, so found lunch near the arcade, just by reading signboards till I found a lunch special that piqued my interest.  This place had Spanish onion soup and a hummus sandwich.

Alcohol was a definite no-no for Justin, so I took this chance to visit a little microbrewery near our apartment, and sneak a drink.  Ireland has absolutely no shortage of pubs, but really, the variety of beers available is pretty small.  The craft brewery trend hasn't hit them head on like it has us here in the U.S.!

Another great thing about Dublin - there are almost as many bookstores as there are pubs.  Which is saying something!  I spent some pleasant minutes knocking around in a few, and picked up a nice little stack of reads.  Later, I went down to the Queen of Tarts in Cow's Lane, and had a wonderful dinner paired with a chocolate cake slice done up to go.

Walking around on my own in large foreign cities isn't something I'd necessarily plan to do, or even think would be fun, but faced with it, I actually had a really nice day.  Fortunately, in the mean time, the medicines had sent Justin on the mend, so we could do some joint sightseeing on our last full day in the city.

Bel Canto

When I read Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett, I told you that there were some authors I knew I would like, long before I actually read their works.  Well, Ann Patchett is another one.  I own almost all of her books, but this is the first I've read.  I think I waited so long because I knew the story would be an emotional rollercoaster from the description on the back.  The set up sounds completely fabricated- an evening party full of international elites is taken hostage, and the ordeal draws out over four months, while the hostages and terrorists find themselves forging relationships they never thought they would or could.  But what floored me is that the set up is based on a true story, and not as loosely as one might assume.  An actual terrorist attack in Lima, Peru, in 1996 very closely mirrors the structure, or frame, of Bel Canto.  This is important, in a book that is often criticized for being over the top in relation to reality.

I do see what the critics mean.  I think the book would have been more meaningful, in a way, if the younger terrorists hadn't turned out to be savants limited only by their lack of education.  I also wonder if the degree of the miraculous talents weren't skewed by the hostages' closeness to the terrorists.  Was Cesar really capable of becoming a world class opera singer, or did Roxane just really, really, really want him to have that capability and project it on to him?  Was Carmen really that intelligent, or did love color Gen's assessments?  We don't know.  But Patchett's style is such that I think she would have told us, if that were true.  So, there are issues.  

I also think that every book has flaws, flaws that might be tiny or might be gigantic.  The trick, or the magic, comes when it manages to make you love it anyway.  Which I do, with Bel Canto.   In a weird way, reading this book reminded me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  Now there's a book with legions of fans where the magic did not work for me.  All I could see were the flaws.  

There are so many beautiful moments in Bel Canto, and a focus on the good in human nature.  That's actually rarer than you would think, in the literary world.  Patchett is wordy, but her sentences flow like water and still manage to come across as concise.  She includes so much subtle humor, playing up the irony of hostages enjoying their time with their captors.  She makes a ton of sharp observations, and you learn so much by seeing how each of the main characters view the world and the others.

Final call:


In the very early stages of the book, you learn that the terrorists do not survive, and you think, "Good."  By the end, you think, "What a shame."  And that's nothing short of amazing.

Irish Details - Dublin Part 1

This morning we woke up in Portstewart, on the Northern Irish coast, knowing we needed to be in Dublin by midafternoon, and also knowing we needed to do it using multiple forms of public transportation.

And you know what?  It really wasn't difficult!  We caught a local bus a few blocks from our B&B, which took us to the Coleraine Train Station.

From here, we were able to reach the bus and train center in Belfast, and from Belfast, we could get the same coach bus line that brought us up to Belfast from the Dublin airport at the beginning of the adventure.  About five hours later, we were standing in downtown Dublin, crossing our fingers and hoping our connection with our lodging would show up to meet us.

See, instead of booking a hotel, we used VRBO.com to find a small apartment in a great location, for an extremely reasonable price.  The building we stayed in is the one just to the left of the street light in the picture above.  It was such a nice base - laundry, refrigerator, cooktop - and in a wonderful location.

The little alleyway we were off of is called Cow's Lane, which also housed a great restaurant and a very nice local bookstore.  I was in heaven  :)

For our first Dublin meal, Justin requested something from the Asian spectrum.  We lucked into this little Malaysian restaurant, located right on the river.  It was some of the most incredible food of any type we had all trip.  I had some sort of spicy, peanutty, shrimpy stuff.

A few more scenes from that first day:

The Ha'penny Bridge, a pedestrian way over the River Liffey.

The bookstore in the alley.  It was called The Gutter in homage to Oscare Wilde, whose famous saying is hanging in the window.

And this is Trinity Cathedral, one of the city's landmark buildings.  It was about one block up the street from us, and one evening, its bell tower played for around an hour.  It was quite lovely.

Irish Details - the Fifth Day

This was our last scheduled day of walking, but we decided to go off-course a little bit by visiting Bushmills Distillery, and then making up the time by catching a ride up to Dunluce Castle with our B&B hostess.

Bushmills claims to be the oldest distillery in Ireland, at least for one that's been in continuous production.  Their original license was issued in something like 1604!  In any case, the grounds were lovely, and the products tasty.

Some British pound notes are printed by the Bank of Ireland.  These notes have the Bushmills building on the reverse side.

At the end of the tour, you're welcome to a complimentary tasting of whiskey.  If I remember correctly, the one on the left is a Reserve that you can only get there, at the distillery.  I like bourbon, so I suspected I'd like this stuff, and I was right, I do!

Next, we were off to Dunluce Castle.  Unlike Dunseverick, this one is mostly there.  Dunluce was the seat of the O'Donnells.  They abandoned the castle sometime in the 1600s, when part of the kitchens fell into the sea, taking people with it.  

Above is the view from the courtyard and stables, looking down to the main residential portions of the castle.  The next photo shows the interior of the castle itself.

You can see how precariously a great deal of the castle is perched:

As we were wrapping up our time here, it started to rain.  Not just drizzle, but actual strong rain with a nice cold breeze to whip it around.  We contemplated walking the 9 miles to our B&B for the night, or the 3 miles to the nearest town to catch a bus, but neither seemed like a great idea (at this point, Justin was starting to feel pretty rough from a stomach bug, and I had a deep blister the size of Kansas on my foot).  Staff at the castle advised us that buses do come right by the castle's gates, but the next one wouldn't be there for another two hours.

We could have been in an uncomfortable position, but fortunately for us, an adorable little tea shop sits right outside the front gates of the castle.  We had some wonderful soups and frou frou drinks while we waited for the bus.

These were chai lattes, and very delicious on a cold day.  The cottage also had a peat fire, which was just the perfect thing.

After this, we were able to catch the bus with little fuss and make it out to Portstewart for our last night in Northern Ireland.  The weather was a little better, with sun breaking through betwixt and between rain showers.

This was the view from the little fast food restaurant we found dinner in, on Portstewart Strand.  This is looking westward, toward Mussenden Temple.  A nice, relaxing way to end a long day.  So, it turns out we didn't walk much at all on our last day of hill walking, but that was okay.  Other walkers doing the same itinerary were staying at our B&B and told us it was a miserable slog, so we're glad we skipped it!